This morning, Optus has quietly launched Cash by Optus – the telco’s brand new NFC mobile payments app, allowing you to pay for goods using your smartphone instead of pulling out your debit and credit card.
Partnering up with Heritage Bank and Visa, Cash by Optus operates like any other Visa payWave card. You can load up to $500 at any one time to the virtual card, but will be limited to spending less than $100 per transaction.
“There are already nearly one million Optus postpaid customers with compatible devices who could download this app, get the SIM and make purchases using Cash by Optus,” Ben White, the Vice President of Mobile Marketing at Optus, said.
“We’re the first Australian telco to launch a mobile payments app, and because it’s compatible with many of the latest Android devices and can be linked to any Australian bank account, we’ve got a huge opportunity to bring this technology to a lot of people.”
The service will be limited to a small pool of Android devices, including Samsung’s Galaxy S3, S4 and S5. However, the list of compatible devices is odd. While the previous generation HTC One (M7) is supported, the current one (M8) is not. This is the same for Sony Xperia devices: the Xperia Z1 is supported, but the Z2 and Z3 are not.
You can sign up to the service via their website here.